


Indelible

by SpaceWaffleHouseTM



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Ben is a Secret Agent, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Rey is a Tattoo Artist, Sensual soul mark touching, Sharing a Bed, Soulmate Tattoos, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-10-15 17:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17533436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWaffleHouseTM/pseuds/SpaceWaffleHouseTM
Summary: Ben's boss orders him to get his soul mark removed at a tattoo parlor just outside Jakku, but when the artist he pays to do the job at Niima Tattoo Parlor bears his mark, he risks his life in order to keep it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trish47](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trish47/gifts).



> This WAS SO MUCH FUN I'm having a good time. I know this says four chapters for now, but expect that to potentially change, since I don't know how long I actually want this to be, so we'll see. It could go down but it could also go up, depends on what my other WIPs do. 
> 
> Also the original prompt... I went a bit dEEPER THAN I NEEDED TO. There was a lot more world building involved than I anticipated. Oops.
> 
> **also a warning for the world's briefest mention of suicide

The afternoon that Ben Solo walked into Niima Tattoo Parlor, the rain hadn’t poured harder over the city of Jakku and its neighboring subdivisions in nearly twenty five years. It was coming down so hard, he nearly didn’t make his appointment that he’d made the day before at half past four that he desperately, desperately didn’t want to make, but had done so under the orders of his boss. It was either his job and his life, or he could keep the mark that had bound him to another for more than thirty years of life. 

He had yet to meet that person, and he was getting in deeper and deeper with the U.S government’s most top secret work on a daily basis. His jobs involved pretending to be other people in order to get information pretty much every time he was out in the field. It was fascinating work, truly, but it came with a price. He couldn’t have a personal life, he couldn’t talk to his family members, and he absolutely couldn’t have a soulmate. 

As a result, Ben had hidden his soul mark for years, keeping the little thing just over his heart completely concealed by whatever means necessary from the moment he was hired by Snoke and his associates. Of course, things had subsequently exploded when he’d found out about Ben’s mark, landing on one of the last photos of him where it was visible — a picture of him and his father at their neighborhood pool when he was fifteen — and immediately threatened to terminate his employment — amongst other things— unless he got the damn thing removed. 

And there he stood, outside of the tattoo parlor letting the rain pour over his suit as he stepped out of the taxi, and looked up at its bright neon sign with a sorrow filling his chest that he hadn’t known was possible to feel. He’d grown rather attached to his mark, wondering if the person who shared it was out there wishing to find him as bad as he was wishing to find them. To get rid of it…

He’d heard stories. To get rid of a soulmark was like getting rid of one’s soul. It put the person with the mark in such a severe, emotional pain, they were incapacitated for days afterwards, and sometimes the consequences could be even worse. Knowing this, Snoke had given him the next three weeks off in order to recover from his loss, and he’d gotten a promise from the artist to wait with him until he could be picked up in an Uber. 

Stepping through the glass, automatic doors of the parlor, though, he wasn’t sure he’d have to wait long for those feelings to start sinking in. Already he felt an air of sadness underlying the excitement wafting over everyone else in the room. He could hear and see needles buzzing around him, but while some of the people in there were smiling, Ben’s frown could snuff out a black hole. 

He walked up to a desk at the front, where a young woman with a pretty tattoo of a daisy on her shoulder sat with her legs propped up on a stool, combat boots giving way to toned legs covered in black, leather pants and a top that was short enough to show off an equally toned stomach. The woman they belonged too was rather beautiful, if slightly eccentric going by the three buns on the back of her head, but what struck him the most was the hazel eyes meeting his behind the black, thick-rimmed glasses. “You my two thirty?” she asked in a familiar sounding British accent, crossing her arms over her chest as she sized him up and down the same way he’d done to her. 

“Um, yeah,” he replied, then he held out his hand as she stood up from her perch, and walked around the counter to greet him. “I’m Ben.”

“I know,” she replied, shaking his hand, and he ignored the odd sort of tingling he felt when she touched him. It was a familiar feeling he couldn’t quite place, but wanted to understand the meaning of more than anything. “We spoke on the phone yesterday.” Ah, so that explained the familiarity.

“Oh,” he breathed, feeling himself flush from mild embarrassment. In his defense, this wasn’t the sort of establishment he frequented often in his line of work. The black, graffitied walls — which he suspected had been done on purpose — the similarly colored flooring, and the hanging fluorescent lights overhead all combined to create an atmosphere he was not at all familiar with. This was new territory for him. Of course he had no clue how to act. “Rey, I presume?”

“You’d be correct,” she replied, then she dropped his hand, and cocked her head toward the back of the building. “Come on, follow me. Soul mark removal has to be done in the back.”

“Why?”

“It’s against the regulations for removal of a mark to be public. It’s an intimate thing or something according to some old arsehole who only appears in photos taken in black and white pre-1950,” she explained, then Ben snorted his laughter as she led him to the back of the building, past the other booths of people getting work done on their bodies in much more happy circumstances than he was. “You laugh, but he was right.”

Pangs of jealousy shot through him as Rey led him toward a white door with a silver handle for a knob, rapping her knuckles against it three times before she opened it, and led him inside. Once he was in, she quickly shut the door, and guided him over to a chair that resembled something out of a dentist’s office, except without all the other contraptions involved. 

“Take a seat, make yourself comfortable,” Rey told him, walking over to the back of the room, which had tables full of various supplies and mechanical pieces, and a small water dispenser filled to the brim with freezing cold water. Condensation dripped down the sides under his gaze, and he focused in on it, thinking about everything except what he was about to do. 

_ I’m sorry,  _ he thought to his soulmate as he sat down, and loosened his tie from his neck.  _ I hope if we ever meet, you can forgive me.  _ Oh, how he desperately didn’t want to be there. He wanted more than anything to jump out of that chair and run to find the person who bore his mark and tell them he was sorry for ever even considering it, but leaving his job would be irrational. He could sacrifice having a soulmate for this, after all, Snoke had told him that at thirty, if he hadn’t found his soulmate by then, he likely wouldn’t find them at all. 

Ben was better off spending his days doing actual work instead of waiting for someone who would never come, and so there he sat in the chair, waiting patiently as the artist set up her tools. “You said the mark was on your chest?” she asked after a while, then he nodded. “I can step out of the room, give you some privacy for a moment while you undress.”

Ben shook his head. “No need,” he replied, taking off his tie completely, and letting it pool to the ground beside him. “You’re going to see me without my shirt anyway.”

A small smile appeared on her face as his fingers next reached for the button that was straining to hold his navy blazer together over his broad chest. “That’s true,” she replied, then she leaned back against one of the rear tables. “Are you sure you want to do this? I know it’s not my place, but this is a serious thing you’re about to do, and unless you have a photograph of your mark, it can’t be undone.”

He paused as he slid the blazer over his shoulders, and down his arms. “I have to do it,” he replied, then seeing her look at him expectantly, he sighed. “It’s my job, it… it demands a lot out of me.”

“All this for a job?” she asked incredulously, then he shot her a warning glare, and she put her hands up as his blazer joined his tie on the floor. “Sorry, that was rude.”

Shaking his head, he sighed. “No, it’s fine, I was being rude.” His fingers were shaking as he reached for the top button of the white shirt he’d worn that morning. “I’m just… a bit on edge.”

“I see.”

“I don’t want to do this, but I don’t have a choice.” Button after button came undone beneath his touch, and soon the entire shirt was open, but his mark hadn’t quite been exposed yet. “So here I am.”

She nodded slowly, then she started reaching behind her for a black tool that almost resembled a drill, plugged into the wall by an extension cord at the same time as he began to slide his shirt from his shoulders. The air was cold against his exposed skin, but he’d been wearing two layers, so this didn’t phase him much. What did get him was the way the artist’s — Rey’s — eyes washed over his body, her jaw dropping when it landed on his mark, which was a series of five, black stars in the shape of a sword with a crossguard hilt. 

Suddenly her entire demeanor changed as she fell back against the table, and blinked at him for a while as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Ben leaned forward as her face went pale, fearing for a moment that she would pass out as his shirt fell to the floor. “Are you alright?”

Rey muttered something unintelligible, then took in a shuddering breath as she walked forward, and sat down on the stool positioned by his chair, scooting it forward so she could get a better look at Ben’s mark. He thought initially that she was just trying to get a better look at her work area, but then her face grew soft and a little sad, then her hand reached out, her fingertips ghosting over his skin so lightly, he wasn’t sure if she was actually touching him. 

“Rey?” he asked, feeling his heart start racing in his chest as she traced the mark lying on his sternum. Both of them were almost panting as she stared at it mystified, reaching up to remove her glasses with her other hand, and  _ fuck,  _ she had beautiful eyes, ones he thought he might want to stare into forever if it weren’t for the matter at hand. 

She swallowed, then those hazel eyes were looking into his again, and he could see mist developing within them. “Can I show you something?” she asked, looking at him cautiously, then he gave her a slow nod. 

“Yeah, why?” He blinked at her a few times. “What’s going on?”

Rey’s tongue darted out to wet her lower lip, causing his heart to race a little bit faster in his chest as he watched her lean away from him, then she reached for the hem of her shirt, and he watched, slack jawed, as she pulled it over her head. She now sat before him half naked save for the oddly endearing black and white striped bra, but for once that wasn’t what he noticed. That wasn’t what she wanted him to see. She wasn’t stripping her clothing in an attempt at seduction, no, it was because in the center of her chest was a familiar, sword shaped mark made up of five stars. 

_ We have the same mark. _ It felt like the breath had been knocked from his lungs, like he couldn’t breathe, because there she was. After all that time, after all of Snoke’s words about how she wasn’t out there, how she wasn’t waiting for him like he was waiting for her, she was sitting there before him, and they were both shirtless in the back of her tattoo parlor witnessing one another for the first time. 

Snoke had been wrong, he’d been more wrong than he could ever know, and suddenly fear coursed through Ben’s veins at the thought of his boss. He was only just willing to go through with this when he hadn’t thought he’d ever see his soulmate, but now that she was there, staring at him with the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen, there was no way he could do it. Not without getting the chance to know her, and more likely than not, not ever. 

“It’s… it’s you,” he breathed, then he leaned forward, staring more intensely at the mark that bound the two of them together, reaching a cautious hand out to touch the skin there with a hesitant look up. She gave him a nod, and he let his fingertips press against her mark as her chest rose and fell beneath his touch. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her swallow nervously before she reached out a hand, and pressed her own palm to his chest, undoubtedly feeling the way his heart was absolutely racing in his chest the same way he was feeling hers. 

Rey was warm, impossibly warm, and maybe it was the feeling of her fingers against his skin, but his mark felt like it was on fire as she touched it, and both of them gasped against the feeling. She met his eyes, and he could see her trembling, though whether from the cold or from that shared sense of, “ _ Hello, finally, _ ” he couldn’t tell, but he sensed a bit of fear in her gaze this time, and he slowly nodded. “Don’t be afraid, I feel it, too,” he promised her, placing his spare hand over hers as he shook his head. “I thought… I thought I’d be able to go through with this…”

“You don’t have to.”

“But I do… It’s… my life’s at risk,” he replied, slowly removing his hand from her chest. Hers lingered a second longer, but then it fell to her side as she moved the stool even closer to him. “I can’t explain why, but… my boss ordered me to do this, and the consequences if I don’t…”

Understanding flooded her eyes, then she leaned back, and blinked back the tears that had started to gather in her eyes. “Do you still want me to do it, then?”

“What?”

“Remove it,” she replied, then she leaned down, and reached for her shirt where she’d discarded it, and he felt heat flood his cheeks as he watched her put it back on, that tiny sliver of her stomach still exposed by the shirt’s short length. “I know it’s a bit awkward given that… I share your mark, but… If your life’s at risk…”

He shook his head more fervently. “No, I can’t… Not now..” he replied, then he ran his hand through his hair. “I have three weeks to figure out what to do.”

“That’s how long you have off?” she asked softly, then upon seeing the subtle bow of his head, she paused. “Let me help you, then.”

Ben’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “How?”

“I don’t know, but Ben, I’ve only just met you, and maybe it’s the fact that we were quite literally made for each other, but I want to help you.” She reached down, and handed him his clothes that he’d let pile on the floor beside hers. “You deserve the chance to live a full life with your mark intact, whether or not I’m in it. You don’t want the emptiness that comes after. I’ve seen how people are when they walk out of here. The grief… Did your boss warn you of all the side effects?”

“No, he just said I would be overwhelmingly depressed for a few weeks.”   


“Yes, so overwhelmingly depressed that people have been driven to…” She didn’t finish her sentence. “I’ve seen it happen to people, and I can’t let that happen to you.”

“What are we gonna do?”

“We’re gonna get you home, and figure it out from there,” she promised him, then she held out her hand. “My shift was going to end after my appointment with you, so let’s sit in here another fifteen minutes or so, then I’m going to drive you home, and we’re going to work through this together.”

Ben perked up at this, then he nodded firmly. “Okay. Fifteen minutes,” he breathed, then he took her hand, feeling an odd tingling where his mark was as she gave him a warm smile. They’d only known one another a few minutes, but he already delighted in seeing it, and yearned to see it again and again with his tattoo still intact on his chest. 

“So, I suppose we ought to get to know one another, then?” She tilted up a hopeful eyebrow as he began to put his clothes back on. “Since fate has decreed we’re made for each other?”

A gently laugh escaped him, and he nodded as he redid the buttons of his shirt. “I suppose so,” he replied, then he reached for his tie. 

There was a moment of silence, then she cleared her throat. “How long have you been in your line of work?”

“A few years.” He tightened the tie around his neck, then began to slide his arms through his blazer sleeves. “I managed to keep the mark hidden from them all that time, but my boss found this picture… it was old, but he wasn’t stupid, he knew what that was.”

“And he ordered you to get it removed?”

Ben nodded. 

“That’s not legal,” she replied, shaking her head at the thought, then her eyes widened as if she was remembering something. 

“Well, he’s making me do it anyway.”

“No, I mean, I know the law about this,” she explained, gesticulating with her hands as she spoke. “You have to get a certification in order to be able to remove soul marks, and part of the test they make you take involves learning the legality of it. That way you can report it when someone comes in needing one removed under duress.”

“Like me?”

“Exactly. And federal law says employers of both the private and public sectors cannot force the removal of a soulmark under penalty of multiple years in jail and possibly life depending on how the victim reacts. It’s not very well advertised, but it exists.”

It sounded too good to be true. What she was saying would offer him an out, allowing him to potentially keep his job, get his bastard boss fired, and keep his mark on top of it, but… there was one problem. “I work for the government,” he replied, then he buttoned his blazer, and placed his hands on his knees. “My boss is in a much higher up position than me. If I try to speak out against him, he could have me taken out before I even finish my first word.”

Rey blinked at him a few times. “Good god, what sort of work do you  _ do? _ ” she asked, a nervous laugh following the question as if she feared his answer. Based on how vague he was, she probably thought he was some sort of sniper or something. Maybe a drug lord. 

“I shouldn’t say,” he replied, then he leaned forward. “Not until we’re… thoroughly alone.”

“I’m guessing it’s the cameras and such?”

“Yeah.”

“We don’t have them in here, but I’m not going to push you if you’re not comfortable discussing it.”

A sigh of relief left his lungs. “Thank you.”

Another brilliant grin was shot his way, then she stood up, and walked over to one of the back tables, reaching beneath it to grab a black messenger bag with a little patch of purple at the corner with the logo of a band he hadn’t heard of. “I think we’ve waited long enough,” she told him, then he got up off the chair, and she cocked her head to the back of the room, where a door with a bright red emergency exit sign waited for them patiently. “Let me clock out, then let’s go.”

Ben gave her a nod, then Rey held up a hand, and walked out of the room, leaving him alone to contemplate how insane this all was for a few minutes. He still hadn’t processed what was happening by the time she walked back in, and pointed to the back door. “Ready?”

“Won’t that thing’s alarm go off?”

“It’s not active at the moment,” she promised him, then her hand was being held out to him again. “Do you trust me?”

He hesitated, but gave her a nod, and took his soulmate’s hand, letting her lead him out of the back door and into the parlor’s rear parking lot. The rain pelted them both once more as she guided him the brief distance across the lot to a lone, black car sitting under the shelter of a tree, receiving the thick, wet drops that fell from the leaves on its windshield. It was an old car, that much was certain, but not the typical clunker from the decade he was born. No, this one was a good bit older than him, and had an odd sort of appeal to it that made it sort of stunning. 

“What kind of car is this?” he asked curiously, and she gave him a warm laugh in response as she approached the driver’s side, putting the keys into the lock. 

“An old Camaro from the sixties. My foster dad left it to me in his will,” she explained, face growing just a little bit sad as memories he didn’t know danced in front of her eyes. “He had a thing for old cars.” With a gentle tug of her wrist, the old beast unlocked, and she opened the driver’s side door. “Get in.”

Ben opened his side without another word, and in perfect sync, the two of them sat down in their seats and pulled their doors shut. Perhaps all those legends he’d heard about soulmates were true, they really did work perfectly in tandem. 

Rey turned the keys in the ignition, the engines roaring to life before she placed a hand on the gear shift, and they were backing out of the spot, flicking on the windshield wipers once they were moving forward. “What’s your address?”

“I’m off exit two, I’ll point the way from there,” he replied.

“Ah, so you’re inner city, then?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s that like?”

He shrugged. “Not so bad, as long as you don’t let yourself get caught on the road after four in the afternoon.”

A soft hum of acknowledgement was given in response, then she was putting the car in drive, and they were making their way toward the road. “Sounds like downtown Jakku,” she replied, then she frowned. “Aren’t there parlors closer to you than this one?”

“I wouldn’t know, my boss made the appointment for me.”

“Of course he did,” she muttered bitterly. “He decided to send you out into the suburbs to basically have your soul removed from your body and he was just going to… what, leave you there?”

Ben only gave her another nod, and she scoffed angrily, seeming outraged — and rightfully so — at the prospect of what would’ve happened to him. “I got in too deep with him before he found out about my mark.” Sorrow crossed his features as he leaned back into the leather seat of her car. “I… If I back out now… It’s termination.”

“ _ Fuck, _ ” Rey whispered, pulling out onto the freeway with a determined look in her eyes. “Well, we’re going to figure something out, cause… I know we’ve only just met, but you’re my soulmate, and there is no way I’m letting you die without getting the chance to know you first.”

“I want to get to know you, too,” he admitted, then he looked down at where his hands rested in his lap, and as they came off the entrance ramp and fully into the right lane, he shifted it over to the space between them, resting just in front of the gear shift. He watched her eyes flicker in that direction, then she let go of the wheel with one hand, and gently took his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together. 

Her gaze remained firmly on the road ahead, both of them watching as the pouring rain came down onto the freeway, and listening to the sound of her windshield wipers moving back and forth ahead of them. “We’re going to fix this, Ben, I promise.”

“I believe you.”

“I have these friends that live inner city like you do,” she told him, then she squeezed his hand. “They’re both lawyers, and brilliant, brilliant men. I’ll call them when we get to your place.”

It struck Ben then what he’d almost done, how lucky he was to have avoided the horrible fate he would’ve faced had he actually gone to another parlor closer to where he lived and met a different artist. He was lucky;so unbelievably fucking lucky to have found Rey. She’d saved his life without even thinking or hesitating, and unknowingly put hers at risk as well. “Thank you,” he told her, feeling his voice shake as he looked at her. 

“No problem,” she replied, then her thumb brushed over the back of his. “And I’d do it again and again in a heartbeat.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“If what happens after removing a tattoo is so terrible, then why do you do it?” he asked, then he watched her entire body tense, and she swallowed nervously. 

“I don’t do it casually,” she replied, her voice trembling slightly as she let go of his hand, flicking the turn signal of the car on as they approached his exit. “I always try to talk people out of it, but… sometimes all you can do is warn of the side effects, and not everyone feels them so severely. Some people only feel it for a few days before they’re right as rain. It’s a small margin that feel the worst of it. Ben… I always check in on my clients when I’m asked to do this. Sometimes I drive them home if they have no one. I… I just want to help people.” 

Her entire body was shaking as she finished speaking, and Ben felt an ache in his chest develop for her. “I think that’s honorable.”

“Thank you.”

“No, thank  _ you _ for saving me from making the biggest mistake of my life,” he replied, then his hand found hers again by the gear shift as they came up to a red light. 

“Where’s the next turn?”

“Make a right on tenth,” he replied, then she gave him a nod, and the car crawled to a stop in front of the light’s red eye. 

Rey glanced over at him then, and for a few seconds all he could hear was the sound of her breathing before she finally spoke. “The moment we started talking in the back room, I could sense you wouldn’t handle it well,” she admitted. “I had this gut feeling, even before I saw your mark. Now I’m… I’m really glad you agreed to let me basically kidnap you.”

A soft chuckle left him. “Rey, is it really kidnapping if you’re driving me to my apartment?”

“No, not really, but… This day has just not gone where I expected it to at all.” She pressed on the gas as the light turned green, guiding them down the road at a casual five miles over the speed limit. “I just… I spent my whole life wondering who else shared this mark, hoping that every time I saw a date or a partner with their shirt off that it would be on their chest as well, and then… I found you…” There was another silence, then she took in a deep breath, and continued, “And we came so frighteningly close to missing each other. It’s… we’re lucky.”

“We are,” he replied warmly, feeling a slight lump forming in his throat as he realized what she was saying. That day they’d found each other, they’d found their soulmate, the person they’d been destined to be with since birth, and it was like she’d found him standing at the edge of a cliff, getting ready to jump. They’d almost missed each other indeed, but those two ships passing in the night had stopped to meet each other in the middle, and he was so grateful they did. “I’m glad I met you.”

“Me too.”

They came up on tenth street shortly after, and Rey again released his hand to drive, letting him point the way toward his apartment for the rest of the trip. Their conversation varied, but stayed generally light, and for the most part they just listened to the sound of the rain and the windshield wipers moving back and forth so they could see. 

It was another ten minutes before they were driving through the central part of the city, and then Ben was guiding her through the guest parking lot of his building. He watched her put the car in park, then she gave him a soft smile. “You made it.”

“We made it,” he said, then they opened their doors, the sound of them slamming shut a moment later echoing through the concrete parking deck. He led her through the rows of cars until they reached the elevator that would lead them up into the central part of the building. 

“This is a bit fancy,” Rey mused as he pressed the up button to summon the elevator. “My House looks like a dumpster compared to this.” He gave her a weak chuckle, then she nudged his arm with her elbow, and they both looked down at the ground with flushed cheeks. 

The elevator dinged it’s arrival, then the doors opened up to reveal a well-kept interior with a glass window replacing the rear wall, and mirrors on the other sides. “What the hell?” Rey whispered under her breath as he pressed the button for his tenth floor apartment, causing him to snort in amusement. 

“You can see the city once we get above the lobby level,” he told her, then the doors closed, and the elevator began to move up. The two of them faced the window, watching as downtown Jakku came into view as a sea of lights glittering through the veil of rain and darkening sky, but he wasn’t paying attention to the view. Well, technically he was, but it was a different view than he was supposed to be looking at. 

Rey was utterly entranced the second they started to rise above the street level, her jaw slack, a hand raised up to the window that allowed him to see the daisy tattoo on her shoulder, and he noticed another, colorful drawing of the same flower by her wrist. He wondered why she’d picked it twice, but it was only a passing thought as he watched her witness the view he had of Jakku’s skyline for the first time. “It’s beautiful.”

“It is,” he said, though he still wasn’t looking at the city, and his gaze was firmly locked onto her. She glanced over at him then, her cheeks flushing as the corners of her mouth twitched up, then they looked away, and this time Ben really was looking out at the city. 

They came to a drop a few seconds later, and Ben took her hand as he led her down the hall toward his apartment, his heart racing faster than the speed of light as he counted down the numbers until they reached it. She was still holding onto him as he fished his keys out of his suit pocket, then unlocked the door. “It’s no palace, but it’s home,” he told her as they walked inside. 

The front of his apartment was just a small hallway, but it quickly opened up into a wide living room with sharp-edged furniture designed not for comfort, but for style. Like all the other units in the building, it had floor to ceiling windows, but what made it different was that his boss had gotten his retrofitted with bullet proof glass, which he’d claimed would help him in the event that his cover was blown and he became a target. 

So far, that had yet to become an issue.  _ So far.  _

“I don’t know what a palace is to you, but this sure looks like one to me,” Rey said as her hands skimmed the back of his black sofa. “This is gorgeous.”

He shrugged. “It’s just lonely,” he replied casually, then he froze at the implications of that sentence. “Sorry, that was too much information, we’ve only just met.”

Rey walked back over to him, taking his face in her hands and forcing him to look at her. “I don’t mind,” she said, shaking her head. “You can tell me whatever you need to. I think even though we’ve known each other for an hour, I like you, and if you need someone to listen to you, I’ll be that person. Consider it part of the package deal that comes with my help.”

They both laughed at this, then her hands slid down to his shoulders, and she looked down at his chest, undoubtedly remembering the mark he bore beneath the layers of his clothing. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

“Maybe it’s not about deserving something,” she pondered aloud. “Maybe it’s just a case of wickedly good luck.”

“That’s probably it.”

She looked like she wanted to say something else, but at that moment, his phone went off with a familiar ringtone that only rang for one person. A specific set of beeps in Morse code sounded out from his phone announcing an incoming call from Snoke, and his blood ran cold at the sound of it. “Shit.”

“What is it?” Rey asked, her voice full of concern. 

“It’s my boss,” he replied, fishing his phone out of his pocket, and staring at the  _ Anonymous _ on the caller ID. “Shit… I thought he’d give me more time.”

Her eyes went wide. “What are you gonna do?” 

“Answer it, I have to.”

One of Rey’s hands again came up to cup his cheek. “You can do it,” she promised. “I’m right here with you.”

“Thanks,” Ben replied, then he slid his thumb across the screen to answer the call. “Hello?”

“I trust your appointment went well?” Snoke’s low voice growled through the speaker, blunt and to the point as always. 

“Yes, sir,” he replied tritely, working to keep his voice completely void of emotion. 

“ _ Good, good.  _ Now, to business.” 

Ben’s entire body tensed, and he looked down at Rey, who mouthed, “It’s okay,” making him feel a tiny pinprick of relief as her thumb gently stroked his cheek. 

“In three days I will require proof that you’ve done what I’ve asked in order for you to continue your employment.”

“In what form, sir?”  _ Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.  _

“An image of the artist’s work as well as a written statement from them confirming it was done,” Snoke said, his voice coming out in a much more evil hiss than he remembered. “I will give you time to recover some, but if I do not receive evidence within three days…”

Ben’s blood ran cold, and it took all of his strength to nod — even though Snoke wasn’t there — and say, “Yes, sir,” before his boss hung up, and he was completely alone in his apartment again save for Rey.  

“What is it?” she asked as he began to breathe hard in the aftermath of the phone call. “What’s wrong?”

“We don’t have three weeks, Rey.”

“ _ What?  _ He’s demanding you go back to work three days after—“

“No,” he replied, placing his hands on Rey’s shoulders as if he were about to fall — which he’d been considering doing — and she was the only thing that would keep him upright. “We have three days to provide him proof that you did it, or…”

“Or?”

“I’m terminated.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Local author knows nothing of spies nor lawyers, but we're doing this anyway. Thanks so much to everyone who read and loved the first one, hopefully this followup works out.

To say Ben was panicked would’ve been an understatement — termination meant he’d be taken out in the name of assuring everything he’d ever done had been kept secret — but outwardly he didn’t show it even as he stepped back from Rey. She was already rambling off ways that they would protect him, and he admired her for it, but none of what she was suggesting would work unless they could literally hide him in Antarctica, and he didn’t think any of them had the money to pull that off. 

“How fast can you get your lawyer friends here?” he asked, then he shook his head. “Or how fast can we get to them?”

Rey blinked at him a few times, then she pulled her phone out of her bag, and immediately began to type out a text. He watched her as she moved, observing the concentrated crinkle of her brow as her thumbs fluttered across the screen. It was rather endearing to look at, actually, just like the rest of her. There was something about her beyond the fact that she bore his mark. This girl had been willing to lay down her life to make sure that he got the opportunity to live his. That meant something to him…

_ That meant everything to him.  _

“They’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

This time it was Ben who was blinking. “How’d you get them your location so quickly?”

“I just shared my location on my phone,” she replied, then she frowned. “I’m getting the vibe, though, from your unspoken job that it might not be such a good idea.”

Ben shook his head. “It’s not, but it’s a bad enough idea to bring you here. Anywhere near me right now is… not good.”

“You’re acting like you’re some kind of secret agent,” Rey said with a nervous laugh, then Ben froze, and she stepped back, nearly dropping her phone in the process. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah… Oh,  _ shit _ ,” he replied, then he moved about the apartment at a rapid pace, sweeping his hands over every conceivable piece of furniture. They really hadn’t thought through this decision, had they? Though he supposed there really was no truly safe place for them to go. Now that they were at his place, they’d have to make it as safe as possible, and that started with removing all potential bugs that Snoke might’ve stuck in there. 

Rey was staring at him perplexed as his fingers moved over the granite of his countertop, checking the flat surface and beneath the corners, and feeling for any sign of a metallic bump indicating a bug. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked quietly. “Are you… searching for—?”

Ben shushed her, then continued his search, cocking his head in a way that indicated he wanted her to come toward him, then when she was in reach, he tugged on her hand, pulling her into his space. She gasped slightly as he leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I’m looking for bugs,” he confirmed for her. “I… I’m so sorry I brought you into this, but I need you to help me find them.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she promised him, then he felt her press a gentle kiss to his temple. “Ben, I don’t want you to die, sometimes you have to work a little harder to keep someone alive.” 

His temple felt like it was on fire as she pulled away, squeezed his hand, and walked over to check the fridge. For a moment, he stood there a little stunned as he watched her examine his furniture, then he shook himself out of his stupor, and quickly rushed back to work. They needed to make sure his apartment was clean so they could properly talk — especially if they planned to speak with those lawyers she knew. 

It felt like hours went by, but eventually the entire apartment was combed, and no foreign devices were found.  _ That didn’t mean they weren’t there,  _ his mind supplied uselessly, but before he could chastise himself, there was a knock on his door, and Ben was once again in his kitchen, grabbing the tiny pistol he kept in his silverware drawer — because that was definitely a normal place to put it — and making sure it was loaded as he made his way toward it. 

“Ben,” Rey whispered, staring at the gun with wide eyes as he walked past her. “It’s probably just Finn and Poe.”

“It might not be,” he replied, then he kept the gun held low in one hand as he approached the viewport of his door, and looked outside. Much to his relief, it was indeed two well dressed men with neutral colored business suits smiling and chatting away stood outside his door, and he put the gun in the waistband of his pants as he opened the door. “Finn?Poe?”

“Ben?” one of them asked, a shorter man with curly, dark hair and a smile that could drop trousers everywhere he went. 

The man in question gave them a nod, then he stepped back, opening the door to allow them in. “I’m Poe, by the way,” the one with the sensual smile told him, briefly shaking Ben’s hand before he stepped into the apartment. 

“Finn,” the other man said, dropping a charming smile that didn’t quite manage to induce thoughts of removing clothing before he quickly followed suit. 

Ben was quick to shut the door behind them, listening as the two men walked in and greeted Rey warmly. He walked back into his living room to find the three of them exchanging hugs. “You know, when you said your soulmate was in trouble, you didn’t mention he’d be this hot,” Poe said in a voice that was clearly trying to be a whisper, but failing epically. 

A snort left him in response as he walked into the room. “I’m flattered, but I’m unfortunately heterosexual.”

“Even if you weren’t, we both have soulmates,” Poe replied as he pulled away from the hug, then he rolled up the sleeve of his suit jacket, revealing a geometric gathering of triangles on his wrist. “My heart belongs to this guy.” He cocked his head toward Finn. “And yours… should you choose to accept it, goes to her.”

He and Rey glanced over at each other, their cheeks flushing as they quickly looked away, then Poe tugged on the strap of a laptop bag, and looked over at Ben. “So, where can I set up? We have a lot to discuss, you and I.”

Looking briefly around his apartment, Ben settled on the living space with the smooth, black couches. “In here,” he said, then he led them to it, and he sat down near the electric fireplace with Rey on the right side of the room while Finn and Poe sat on the couch across from them. Both men made faces by how stiff they were, but said nothing out loud. “Sorry, I know it’s uncomfortable… I wasn’t expecting to entertain guests.”

Finn shook his head as he pulled out a notepad. “No worries, this is about you, not us,” he told him. “Now, Rey didn’t tell us much in her text, but to my understanding… your boss is threatening you with your life to remove your soulmark?”

“That’s pretty much it, yeah.” Ben sighed, staring out the window to where the sun had begun to set — thanks to the early winter hours — causing the rain that pelted his window to feel even more dreary and foreboding than it had before. 

“So… In order for me to be able to do anything for you legally… I’m gonna need you to tell me everything,” Poe said, then he quickly corrected himself. “I mean — I need you to tell  _ us _ everything. Things like… where do you work? Who’s your boss? How was your appointment chosen? I’m gonna need to see proof of your mark as well and… tell me… how did you two meet?”

They glanced at one another again, then Ben fought back a smile. “She was supposed to remove the mark,” he said, thinking about Rey’s face when he’d removed his shirt, and she’d seen the mark for the first time. “Then she saw it… and the recognition was instant.”

“Basically we met at my shop,” Rey added, then Poe was nodding eagerly, typing away at his laptop while Finn wrote it down on the notepad. 

“Ben, tell me about your boss?” Poe asked. “Even if it’s at a risk to my life, I can have this data out of this room before anyone even thinks to shoot me.”

Ben blinked at him in surprise. “Are you sure?” he asked, then he swallowed nervously as the two lawyers sitting across from him nodded. “Because… I work for the kind of person you only see in movies.”

“You may not believe this, but… I’ve gotten people out of some pretty tough situations you ‘only see in movies,’” was his response, then he tossed a glance at Finn. “We both have. It’s what we’re good at. We’re not just lawyers, Ben… we specialize in this stuff.”

“I send a lot of my clients their way when they need help,” Rey interrupted, then she reached out for Ben’s hand. “Ben… you can trust them. Just tell them what you told me.”

An apprehensive look passed from him to her, then he took in a deep, shuddering breath, and nodded. “I work for the Central Intelligence Agency…” God, he felt like a douche spelling it out like that, but it was the truth. “Doing a lot of black-ops work… Stuff that’s highly classified. That’s why my boss has threatened me with termination if I don’t get this done.”

“And by termination, I’m guessing you mean… death…” Finn replied, sounding completely unphased by Ben’s revelation. Maybe he really did deal with this kind of thing on a regular basis. He gave him a nod, then the lawyer wrote down what he’d learned on his notepad. 

“Death and the complete erasure of my existence,” Ben replied, then he shook his head. “I was younger when I went into this line of work… Fresh out of college, didn’t even read the contract fully before I signed it, and by the time I realized what I was in for… I didn’t think it mattered…”

“Until?” Poe asked. 

“Until Snoke saw my mark in an old photo three weeks ago.” He tightened the grip he had on Rey’s hand, feeling her thumb run over his in response. “We do background checks every six weeks on all agents no matter their ranking. They don’t always find everything… and I thought that I had buried any traces of that image, but… somehow he got a hold of that, and…” Another deep breath. “I… had a choice. I could either get rid of my mark or they could get rid of me.”

There was a tension in the room after he said that, and Finn and Poe looked at one another nervously before they asked him another barrage of questions. He was asked about mission content, what he’d done, the intricacies of his contract, about his boss, and he gave the two men everything. It was high past time he got out of his work with Snoke. The man had been toxic to Ben the entire time he’d known him, but every time he thought about getting out, he remembered the potential consequences of what would happen if he was terminated. 

Fear of death kept him in line, and he suspected it was the same for any other agent. 

But now he had a reason to try a little harder; to keep his soul and to maybe one day get to know his soulmate. Rey held his hand the entire time he talked, and she’d only known him for hours but already she’d done so much for him. He couldn’t help staring at her a little, unable to comprehend that he’d gotten lucky enough to find his soulmate before it was too late, to have finally been given an out. 

It almost felt like he didn’t deserve it. 

Hours later — or rather, what seemed like hours — Poe was sending off the information he’d collected to his office. He and Finn were assuring Ben that they’d be fine, and preparing to make their way home, but something made him feel uneasy still. It was probably everything that had happened that day still being processed in his mind. Still, watching them leave, a bad feeling stirred in his gut as he walked them toward his front door. “Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

Poe gave him a firm nod. “Yeah, we’ll be fine. We’ve dealt with this kind of thing before. You… You wouldn’t believe how common it is for people in the government to come to us… well… to come to Rey.”

Ben glanced at Rey then as the two men continued gathering their things, and she again laced her fingers through his. “It’ll be okay.”

“We’ve already sent in what we know about your case to the office. Once that’s done and out there… there’s nothing anyone can do.” Poe assured him, then he turned to Finn. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah,” was his reply, then he shot Ben a smile. “We’ll reach out to you again soon.”

“Before my three days are up?” Ben asked. 

“Buddy, they won’t even have the chance to think about killing you. I’ll have them shut down so fast, you won’t even have time to blink,” Poe replied, then Ben, stubborn asshole that he was, blinked pointedly at his new lawyer. Luckily, he was the sort of man to find it funny, and another clothes dropping smile was thrown his way before he and Finn finally made their way out. 

Even as he watched them go, Ben had never felt more nervous. It felt like something bad was going to happen, but… maybe that was because of his training. He’d always been conditioned that abandoning his job was a terrible idea with horrible consequences, and now that he was doing it… His heart was racing at the speed of light. 

“Ben, are you gonna be okay?” Rey asked quietly, then he felt her hand squeeze around his, and he looked down to find warm hazel eyes staring up at him. 

He swallowed nervously, then he shrugged. “I don’t know… I never thought about getting out until today. Not… Not in a way that was serious.” 

Rey tugged on his hand, leading him back into the living room with a soft little grin on her face. “Come on.”

“What are we doing?” 

“Well, I told you I’d help you out, and… I want to get to know you… Whether or not we have all the time in the world to,” she told him, then she sat down on the couch near the fireplace, and he quickly followed suit. “I know you already told Finn and Poe… But I want to ask you myself… how’d you become James Bond?”

Ben snorted his laughter, but leaned back against the rear of the couch, thinking back to how his story had begun. “I was a political science major,” he told her, shaking his head at the dumb college memories that filled his mind. “Fresh out of college, I was seeking employment anywhere… I applied to places without even looking at the name of the company or what kind of work I would be doing. It wasn’t like I came from a place of hardship, but… I wanted to prove I could handle myself out there on my own…

“Snoke found me through those. I had everything he envisioned in an agent, he said, offered me work with the agency, and… I was young and stupid and said yes to everything...so I went with it. I learned how to do all sorts of things under his thumb. I became… I became a different man.”

“What did you do?”

“Rey…” he whispered softly. “We’ve only just met, I don’t want you to look at me differently.”

She shook her head, and rested her hand on his shoulder. “No, I won’t, I promise, just tell me, what happened?” 

“I learned to kill people in… many different ways. How to do it quietly, how to make it look like an accident, or how to frame someone else. How to get information from people using the cruelest strokes. Half the time I wondered if it was legal.” 

“And like you said earlier, it wasn’t?”

“No… but by the time I figured it out…”

“It was too late.”

“Do all soulmates finish each other’s sentences like this?” he asked, genuinely curious.

Rey snickered quietly, then she shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. Most of the people I see haven’t ever met theirs. They’ve given up.” Her smile faded as she spoke. “You coming into my shop was… probably the greatest thing that ever could’ve happened to me. I honestly thought I’d end the day worrying about whether or not you’d be alive this time next week. I was prepared for…” She met his eyes, then, and her expression was completely sober. “I wasn’t prepared for you.”

“I wasn’t prepared for you either,” he said, then his hand brushed over the mark on his chest, feeling his heart beating beneath his fingertips. “I really thought my life… well… as I knew it was going to end.”

“In a way it did,” she assured him, then she scooted a little bit closer to him. “You’re getting out of a situation you’ve wanted to escape for what sounds like years.”

“Yeah.”

“Ben… your life as you knew it ended, but it changed for the better, I think. Now you have a chance to actually live it.”

He smiled at her softly, then shifted on the couch so his entire body was facing her as they talked. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What’s your story? We didn’t figure that out with Finn and Poe,” he said, his voice dropping down to a whisper. “I wanna know about you, too.”

She giggled gently, then laid back on the sofa, staring up at his ceiling as she thought up her response to that question. Ben watched the shadows of raindrops running down her face from where the city lights shone through the window, almost hypnotized by the sight as he watched them run over the daisy tattoo on her shoulder. “What do you want to know?”

“Can I… can I lay down next to you?” he asked tentatively, then she propped her head up on her arm, shielding the daisy tattoo from view. “You just… you look comfortable.”

Rey hummed her response, then shifted on the couch to make room for him. He then took his time crawling in the space between the back of his couch and the front of her body, taking great care not to accidentally touch her as he settled his large frame in front of hers. “You good?” she asked. 

“No, but these weren’t exactly designed for lounging on.”

Rey giggled again, and  _ shit _ , he already liked her laugh more than he should. Ben watched her face light up as she looked at him, and it wasn’t just from the bright, city lights, but also from within. She was some sort of beacon, and he’d been a ship lost in the night, being guided home by the rotating spotlight of a lighthouse. “What do you want to know?”

“How’d you get into tattoo artistry?” he asked, fingers reaching down to trace the other daisy by her wrist. 

The room fell quiet for a few seconds, then she seemed to figure out how to tell her story. “After I left art school I needed something to do to make money, so I was trying to figure it out and a friend of mine, Rose was working there first… she saw my sketches and told them about me. After that… a shit ton of training and… a few years later Rose quit. And they needed someone to take over the mark removal job.”

“Oh.”

“So I did it, and the first few months were hellish, and I didn’t know how to handle it, but after a couple of years I think I had it down pat,” Rey’s fingers found his, then, lacing them through one another as if she were trying to anchor herself to the world. “Then another month or two later… I met you…”

That last sentence brought a smile to his face, then he cautiously took one of his arms, and wrapped it around her waist, his hand splaying out over her back to hold her close. “Is this okay?” he asked, panic shooting through him when he realized he really should’ve mentioned his plan to properly hold her  _ before  _ he made his move. 

_ Nice move, genius.  _

“It’s fine,” Rey assured him, then before he could ask her if she was certain, one of her arms wrapped around his waist in a form of wonderful retaliation. “There, now we’re even…” She paused for a second. “You’re warm.”

A soft chuckle left him. “Thanks.”

“No, really, you’re… you’re like a blanket,” she said, then he saw her face flush pink. “Sorry, that’s… anyway… was there anything else you wanted to know?”

_ Where did he even start with that question? _

“Why the daisy tattoos?”

“My foster mum’s favorite flower growing up,” she told him, then she shrugged. “She passed right after I started working at the shop, so I had them done in her honor.” Another quiet, then Rey looked down and away from him. “In multiple places, so I could look at them and remember her, but… all they did those first few months was make me feel alone.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ben replied, tracing one of his thumbs lazily over the skin of the tattoo by her wrist. “I’ve never had any ink done. I’ve only ever had my mark my entire life.”

“How’ve you kept it hidden?”

“Never took my shirt off in public, and refused to do it for the agency. It was in my contract,” he explained, then he shook his head. “That’s part of how Snoke figured me out.”

“Cause he caught you in a lie?”

“Yeah…” Ben replied, then he exhaled steadily. “Anyway… that’s… enough about him.”

“Right, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, then they fell quiet again, and he thought up things he wanted to know. What did one ask their soulmate when they met them? How did they talk? How did they start whatever they were destined for?

“Hey, Ben, what’s your favorite color?” Rey asked him out of the blue a while later, then he laughed, the sound shaking them both as they held one another on his couch. 

He thought about it for a minute, then settled on something basic. “Probably red. Not really sure why.”

“Hmm… that’s a good one, I like gray.”

“Gray?”

“Yeah, I know it’s boring, but it just… it’s my favorite…” she said, then her eyes drifted up to the window, and his followed suit, the both of them watching the rain falling against the backdrop of a now completely darkened sky. 

Ben actually loved the rain. It was soothing and almost hypnotic to watch when he observed it from indoors, but maybe not so much otherwise. He began stroking little circles around the ridges of Rey’s spine, his fingers ghosting the edge of her crop top as they moved, but never quite reaching her bare skin. That was a conversation for another day. “Do you like the rain?”

“I love it,” she told him, her voice softer than he’d heard it so far. “... This may be too early to mention this, but… I trust fate and ours are… connected, so… I was born in England, and my parents left me behind shortly after moving here.” There was a quiet sniffle, then Ben held her a little more tightly. “I don’t really know or understand why, but… they did, so I wound up in the foster system, got taken in by a couple in Phoenix.”

His jaw fell open. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”

“I’m okay with it, it was a long time ago, but… I grew up in the desert, and my point — the reason I’m telling you all this — is that I love the rain now that I’m here. It’s nice to see it…”

“Is that why you moved to the rainiest part of the country?” Ben asked, thinking of Jakku’s geographic position. They were about fifty miles to the south of Seattle, sitting comfortably near the peaks of the tall mountains and volcanoes that formed the Cascades in the shadow of enough rain to drown a person. 

Rey gave him another little giggle at that, then she buried her face against his chest, pressing herself right up against his mark. It felt like the skin there was on fire, but in the best possible way. “It might be,” she replied, then she scooted a little closer to him. “I was never really sure why I chose to come here.”

“Must’ve been fate again.”

“What a meddling minx.”

They shared another round of laughter, then as they came down from it, Ben felt a yawn escape his lips. “Shit, what time is it?”

“That’s… that’s an excellent question…” Rey replied, then she reached into her pocket, temporarily removing her arm from around his waist. Already, he missed the contact, though her arm was back where he wanted it a few seconds later once she’d had the chance to look at the time on her screen. “It’s nearly ten.”

“And I’m already tired.”

“Old man.”

“I’m thirty two.”

“... Old man…”

“Oh, really? How old are you, then?” he asked. She couldn’t have been much younger than him. She didn’t look it, that was for sure. 

Rey was silent for a few seconds, then quietly, almost timidly, she whispered. “Twenty nine.”

“Ha! You’re not much younger than me,” he muttered, then he leaned down, and whispered in her ear. “Old woman.”

Bursting into another fit of giggles, he and Rey continued to hold one another on the couch as the conversation began to die, giving away to sleepy mumbling as the time passed. “Did you want to go home?” Ben whispered softly, feeling himself begin to slip away into unconscious.

She shook her head. “No… Not if you don’t want me to…”

“I don’t want you to.” He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “So you’ll stay?”

“Yeah… I’ll stay.”

A smile parted Ben’s lips. “Good night, then?”

“Good night,” she said, then she snuggled in closer to him, and he let his eyes drift shut, sleep overtaking him with ease for the first time since he’d been caught by Snoke’s sharp talons. 

Despite having only known each other for a few hours, it would seem that Rey was already changing his life for the better, and even as the fear of termination and actually ending his time with Snoke’s branch of the agency hung in the background of his mind, he wasn’t afraid. With her by his side, he’d managed to do so much more than he’d ever thought himself capable of, and for once he was filled with hope, his eyes cast toward the future not with doubt, but with excitement. 

Whatever came next for him, he couldn’t tell what it would be, but he already couldn’t wait to see it. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long. THIS KICKED MY ASS

It was still raining when Ben woke up in the middle of the night a good hour or so later. He could still see the rain shadows falling down in the dim lights from where they fell against his window just over the silhouette of Rey’s head, which was tucked gently beneath his chin as she slept soundly. 

Seeing her there, lying beside him, wrapped up in his arms as he held her close, brought him a sense of comfort he hadn’t felt in a long time. It had been so long since he’d been truly happy, since he’d lived a day and not regretted a single part of it. Even if it had started out with the mistake of trying to get his soul mark removed, that mistake had led to him finding his soulmate, and thus the day was absolutely perfect, and he was filled with pure contentment. 

Rey was a true beacon of light for him, shining his way home as he searched desperately for a way out of darkness. They had only just met, but already, she had become important to him, and he hoped he would get to see what everyone was talking about when they told stories about soulmates. 

Thankfully, she’d given him the chance. Not only that, but she’d given him the courage to start his life over, to do it right, and to maybe live a long life of peace instead of a short one of chaos. 

Lying there with her, he’d never felt more calm and free. She was warm in his arms and the sound of the falling rain had never been more soothing, but in the background beneath it all, there was something off. The moment was peaceful, his own mind was still swimming from being shrouded in sleep, and Rey was holding him just as tightly as he was holding her, his thumb mindlessly stroking the daisy of her tattoo. 

And yet, something had woken him up. 

Ben slowly came out of his half asleep state as he got the overwhelming sense that something was horribly, horribly wrong. It was like those moments in a horror movie just before a jump scare, except magnified by a thousand. Something far worse than a ghost on a screen was about to jump out at him, and all of his danger alarms were going off in unison as his brain warned him there was danger. 

But where? The apartment looked peaceful. From the rain shadow to the feeling of Rey’s hands fisting his button down and all the way to his own stroking the skin of her tattoo, there was no sign that they were in harm’s way. None until… 

Motion caught the corner of his eye, tiny and almost undetectable, but he had been professionally trained to detect the smallest hints of movement in the last decade of his life. At thirty two Ben was one of the top agents of the entire country, Snoke had told him as such himself in one of the few moments he actually gave him praise instead of verbal lashes. This meant he was no fool, and when a tiny streak of red darted across his vision, he knew it wasn’t because he was obscenely angry. 

Ben tightened the grip he had on Rey, unsure of exactly what was coming for them until he saw it making its way down the sofa and across Rey’s body, landing itself directly on top of the crown of her head. It was unmistakably the laser pointer of a weapon, one likely positioned on the roof of the building across from his. That one was two stories higher, and two hundred feet away, a prime location for a sniper to take out anyone they wanted to in the building Ben lived in. 

His breathing shuddered as he thought through what this meant. Someone had heard them in his apartment or seen them walk in and knew that Ben hadn’t done as he was told. He had absolutely no doubt in his mind that the perpetrator of what was about to become an attempted murder was Snoke, and he had most definitely been made and his cover blown. He could only hope that they didn’t come after Finn and Poe, too. The two men didn’t deserve such a cruel fate for what they’d done for him. 

The red dot didn’t move from its location on Rey’s head, the sniper undoubtedly waiting for the order to fire. Did they not know that the head they were about to shoot wasn’t his, or did they not care? Or worse… was she the target as a punishment for his actions and Snoke was about to keep him alive anyway in spite of his betrayal in the hopes that he’d come crawling back for forgiveness once his soulmate was dead? 

_ No chance in hell.  _

Without hesitating another second, Ben made sure Rey was secure in his arms, then he rolled them both off of the couch just in time with the loud bang of a rifle being fired. She shrieked upon waking as he pinned her to the ground beneath him, prepared for the falling of glass and the loud, rapid fire of more bullets, but… they never came. 

He looked up to see that there was one, lone bullet impaled upon his apartment windows, and it had splintered the external glass around it, but hadn’t quite made the whole way through. A grin burst on his face.

_ Bullet proof glass. Thanks, Snoke.  _

“What the hell?” Rey was asking beneath him, bringing him back to reality. He quickly stood up, and offered her his hand. 

“We need to run.”

“What?”

“They know I didn’t do it, they just tried to shoot us,” he said as she took it, allowing him to pull her onto her feet. They both flinched as another shot rang out, impaling itself upon the bulletproof glass as if the shooter was absolutely perplexed that they’d failed to kill Rey on what should’ve been a direct head shot.  _ Nice try, asshole.  _

Rey was quick to understand the situation, nodding rapidly at Ben as soon as she processed what he had told her. “Where are we going to go?”

“I don’t know, but we can’t stay here. They’ll come again,” he said, running around the apartment to try and find his most basic weaponry. He found another drawer with a handgun stashed away, and immediately pulled it out to hand it to Rey. “Can you shoot?”

“Yeah, but I won’t.”

“Just hold onto it anyway, I don’t want you to either, but it’ll… it’ll give me peace of mind,” he said, then he fell quiet, noticing there hadn’t been anymore shots fired on his window since the second one a minute earlier. “Shit…”

“What?”

“They’re already moving. We may be too late.”

“What does that me-” She was interrupted by the sound of a vicious pounding on his front door, gasping in surprise at the sound, but it wasn’t that of someone knocking to ask him to open it. No, this was an attempt to force the door open with a weapon. 

Once more, they needed to run, but that wasn’t an option — they were now trapped. Ben glanced back at Rey, and up until that point he’d been unsure of what the hell to do, but looking at her somehow made it clear. “Hide,” he ordered, then he guided her into his bedroom, not even allowing himself the time to think about the fact that she was in there as he closed the door behind them, and immediately pulled out his gun, cocking it with a practiced hand that was running on autopilot. 

Rey paused, then she followed suit, and the two of them stood facing that door as they listened to the sound of Ben’s front one coming down. “This how your nights usually go?” she asked nervously, clearly trying to find some comic relief in the tense situation. “Getting shot at in your own home?”

“Not until I disobeyed orders.”

“How the hell did they find out? Your boss sounded like he was neutral on the phone earlier.”

“We may not have gotten all the bugs, and he may not have found out yet,” he replied, then he looked at her sympathetically. “Rey, I’m sorry I dragged you into all of this.” His voice lowered to a whisper as he heard what was no more than two men starting to make their way through his apartment. “You shouldn’t have to risk your life because of me.”

She scoffed. “I decided back at the shop that this was worth it,” she told him. “And you shouldn’t have to live like this. I want to help you, Ben… Not just because you’re my soulmate.” With that, Rey gave him a warm smile, then turned and aimed her weapon firmly at the door.

A few seconds later, it burst open with an aggressive kick, and in burst two men clad in black whom he recognized immediately. He’d know that shock of ginger hair anywhere, and the look of loathing that Ben mused might have the potential to kill. Maybe he would have tried to fire his weapon, too, there was a black pistol in his hands pointed squarely at Ben’s face, but he didn’t fire it. Ben’s was pointed at his chest.  “Solo.”

“Hux,” he replied back in a bitter greeting, then he flicked his eyes briefly toward the other black clad man. “Mitaka.”

“Sorry,” the latter of the two said, timid as always — and further proof in Ben’s eyes that he’d been right all along in his musings that he’d been designed for the boring desk jobs rather than the rough intensity of the field. 

The ginger stepped forward, forcing Ben backward as he entered the room, then Mitaka followed suit, attempting to intimidate Rey, but she stood her ground, and held out her weapon, forcing them into a standstill. He admired her for that, it took guts to stand up to even a coward like his former coworker. “You disobeyed orders?”

“How’d you find out?” Rey asked, then she shrugged when Ben gave her a look, shaking his head in a warning not to speak. “What? We checked for—”

“You checked for bugs?” Was Hux’s response. “Cute, but you checked in the wrong place. We bugged your parlor.”

Ben watched Rey’s face fall, sadness taking over her eyes as she realized that they hadn’t been safe from the beginning. Sympathy rushed through him for her, but he couldn’t worry about Rey’s emotions at the moment as much as he wanted to, their lives were at risk. 

“So you know, then,” he said, making sure his finger was wrapped firmly around the trigger — not wanting to fire, but certainly not wanting to die — just in case his fellow agent made any sudden moves. “Who she is.”

“Your soulmate,” Hux replied. “I’m sorry, Ben… But you know the rules. You know your orders… And she knows them, too.” 

“I’m getting out… I’m leaving, you can’t stop me…”

“I have to,” was all his coworker said, then he inched a little bit closer, and Ben, still not wanting to fire his gun, hesitated. A bullet wouldn’t leave his weapon unless it was absolutely necessary — a last resort. 

Ben shook his head. “No. Now turn around and get out unless you want me to shoot you.”

“Ben, you know top secret information, there’s no getting away with that,” Hux reminded him, then he took another step forward, and the gun was almost pressed against his chest. “Either come back and terminate her, or we terminate you both.”

“You don’t have to do this,” he protested, wanting to stall Hux for as long as he could until he got the chance to make an escape. “Snoke should know I won’t say anything.”

“He has rules. You broke them.” 

“He’s the one who’s breaking the rules. Half of what he’s done to us in the name of servicing this country is illegal under what must be a minimum of three amendments.”

Hux seemed to concede his point a little, but he continued holding his stance. “Perhaps, but if I don’t do this, I’m dead anyway.”

“That’s exactly what he wants, to keep threatening you so you never stop doing his bidding,” Ben replied, realizing the truth of what he was saying, and just how toxic the cycle he’d been living in had been. “There’s another way to do what we do, a better way than Snoke. Ask yourself… is it worth it?”

Hux hesitated, and he could see in his eyes that he was starting to agree with him, but he’d been conditioned for so long to see things the way of their boss, Ben wondered if this negotiation was even possible. Still, he had to try. Both his and Rey’s lives were on the line. 

“It’s not that easy, Ben, you know it isn’t,” Hux snapped, but he could see the grip on his gun loosen.  _ Perfect.  _ “If I let you go, he’ll send someone after us both.”

“Not if we come after him legally,” Ben replied, not mentioning Finn and Poe out of fear for their safety but still wanting Hux to know his options in the event that he successfully talked him down. “Hux, please… we can get out of his rule, go somewhere else where we won’t get killed for having a soulmate.”

Hux’s eyes flickered briefly over to Rey, and he saw his window of opportunity. Ben launched himself forward, knocking the gun out of Hux’s hands at the same time as he yelled to his soulmate, “ _ Get down! _ ” Not even checking to see if she’d obeyed as he knocked out Hux with a single, overhead strike and moved in on Mitaka in a matter of seconds. 

The other agent went down as easily as the first, his weapon not even prepared to fire, so even as he pulled the trigger, nothing happened, and Ben felled him with little effort, and no blood on his hands. His other coworker actually did try to put up a fight upon realizing his weapon wasn’t working, attempting to throw a swing at Ben’s face before he knocked him to the ground, then kept him pinned there. Mitaka wriggled beneath him, but Ben quickly reaches around, and pinned his arms behind his back, effectively immobilizing him for all intents and purposes. 

Once his task was finished, he turned to Rey, feeling shame and sympathy wash through him when he realized she was still crouching low to the ground. “Are you okay?” he asked softly. 

She gave him a nod, then he caught the fear in her eyes, and he wanted more than anything to hold her and tell her it was going to be okay, but then Mitaka squirmed beneath him, and he remembered the situation. They had to take care of the agents before they did anything else. Quickly, he knocked out his fellow agent with a strike to the back of the head, waiting until he was limp beneath him before he spoke again. “Okay, can you grab his gun and make sure it’s out of reach?” 

“Yeah,” Rey whispered quietly, crawling around Ben until she was right next to Hux, and reaching out ever so cautiously for the weapon he’d tried to shoot them both with. A few seconds later, she gripped it in her hands, and had it held alongside the one he’d given her earlier. “Now what?”

“Now we…” Ben started, then he stopped moving, freezing as he heard the very familiar sound of sirens. Realization dawned on his face — so  _ that  _ had been why the sniper on the roof of the other building hadn’t come after them yet. They were making a run from the police. He had no doubt that his neighbors had heard the gunshots, which the sniper hadn’t even thought to silence in a show of overconfidence that they wouldn’t miss their mark, and had reacted accordingly, summoning emergency services to their building out of fear that something worse was happening. “Now we call your friends and explain to them what happened here.”

Rey nodded. “Sounds perfect, I can do that,” she said, already typing away at her phone, then she frowned. “What about your boss?”

Ben froze at the thought of Snoke, remembering how his boss now knew he’d been betrayed. “I… I don’t know,” he replied earnestly, then he walked back, and sat on his bed as Rey made the call to Finn and Poe, telling them about the attack on his apartment. 

What the hell did he do about Snoke? He’d never disobeyed orders. In all the years he’d worked under his thumb, Ben had been a good little soldier doing as he was told and never questioning his boss. It wasn’t until his soulmark — which he’d almost forgotten about since it had been so long and no one had been found who matched him — had been discovered that he even thought he might’ve had the chance to. 

But now his boss was still out there. He’d probably listened to the failed murder attempt and was either reworking plans to murder him, or he was already on his way to finish the job. Before Ben could think on it too hard, though he heard a gun cock in the same split second that Rey shrieked, his name tumbling out of her before he even thought to look up and see what was wrong. 

The sniper on the roof hadn’t left because of the police, had they?

Within two seconds that felt like forever, Ben’s head snapped up, and he took in his new scenery, watching as his old, but surprisingly nimble and quick boss demonstrated a powerful grip on Rey. One arm was wrapped around her front, managing to pin both arms to her sides while the other pressed a gun tightly to her head, and Snoke looked at his former apprentice with a fire in his eyes that he’d previously only caught glimpses of. “I didn’t hear the tape from the parlor or this would’ve been done much more quickly, I assure you.”

Ben was on his feet in an instant, his own gun pointed firmly in Snoke’s direction as he stood firmly at attention. 

“No sudden movements,” Snoke hissed at him, tightening his grip on Rey, who cried out in pain as he twisted the skin of her arm with the motion. “You know how this works. ”

“Snoke,” Ben muttered, trying not to sound like he was begging as he made his case for their lives. “Please… I… you can’t ask me to do this. Not for you, not for anyone.”

“You do what you’re told for the good of this country.” His boss pressed the gun further into Rey’s skull, causing her to emit another grunt of pain that absolutely shattered Ben’s heart where it beat in his chest. “I thought you understood that. I thought you would be such a wonderful agent. With you under my thumb, I saw so much raw potential… alas, you’ve chosen to waste it.”

A vague part of him became aware that his hand was trembling as he held his gun, but he paid it no mind, putting all of his attention toward staring Snoke down like he wasn’t absolutely terrified. He’d been in worse situations than this, surely he’d be able to make it out of this without shedding tears or letting his enemy know he was scared, right? But he’d never been in a situation where someone he genuinely cared about was in trouble, and while he’d only known Rey for a few hours, there was enough potential between them to carry the immense fear he felt at the thought of losing her. 

“Don’t,” Ben begged quietly, tightening his grip on his trigger. “I’m the one who disobeyed orders. She’s innocent.”

“ _ But you told her, Ben! _ You disobeyed my orders and you told her who you are!” Snoke cried, then he shook his head. “So I’m going to make this simple. I’ll kill her, and then I’m going to give you a choice. Either you come with me, or you join her.”

Ben paused, looking between Snoke, Rey, and his own weapon. “I can’t…”

“So be it.” Snoke’s finger wrapped a little more tightly around the trigger, and Ben’s heart raced as Rey closed her eyes shut, seemingly prepared for her end. 

“Don’t!” He shouted, racking his brain for some way, for any way to convince his boss to let them go. He knew there wouldn’t be. They were going to have to fight like hell to get out of there, but what the hell would they be able to do? “Please. You’re asking me to die anyway if I go with you.” Snoke paused, looking at him with resignation, and Ben felt disappointment flood his veins. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

“I was well aware.” Snoke shrugged a little smugly despite how tightly he was holding Rey. “I figured it was a small risk to take—”

“ _ Small? My  _ life  _ is a small risk to you? _ ” Ben cried, feeling outraged at the thought that he’d meant so little to Snoke that he was willing to expend one of his best agents just to make sure they never got caught. 

“When you’re one of  _ many  _ agents?  _ Yes!” _

Ben locked eyes with Rey, then, catching a glimpse of the same outrage that had taken over him in her expression. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but just by seeing that expression, he could tell they were going to make it through this. They were going to be okay. 

“I was going to do it,” Ben admitted, his voice finally shaking at this admission. “I really was, I was going to walk in there and walk out with my soul basically shattered because I believed you when you said they weren’t out there, and it wasn’t worth risking my life waiting around to see.” He swallowed nervously, and took a cautious step forward. “But I found her instead. Do you really think I could’ve gone through with it after that?”

“You? No,” Snoke muttered bitterly. “That’s your one flaw, Solo. You have too much heart in you. I always feared it would be your downfall, but I never imagined it would be at my hand.”

Rey scoffed at this, then before Snoke could harm her again, she grinned. “You know, for a high up agent, you’re rather sloppy.”

“What?” both Snoke and Ben asked at the same time, bewildered by the confidence with which she spoke. 

“You’re sloppy,” Rey repeated, then in the span of the same split second, she stopped down on Snoke’s foot, forcing him to loosen his grip on her in surprise. There was a sickening metal on bone sound as she thrust her head into the barrel of the gun, knocking it ajar before she dropped down like deadweight into a squat before bouncing back up to punch Snoke across the face. 

The gun wasn’t quite knocked out of his hand, though and his boss came up to shoot her square in the chest before Ben finally stepped in and fired a shot from his own weapon into Snoke’s shoulder. The man cried out in pain as the bullet cut through his flesh into the nearby wall, then he collapsed against it as his former protege charged forward, pinning him against the hard surface by placing his hand over the new bullet hole. 

Rey walked forward to stand by Ben’s side, a grin on her face that he could see from the corner of his eyes. “You should know never to press a gun directly up against someone’s skull. That’s the easiest way to escape. Even your goons knew that.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and shrugged, causing his heart to swell with pride. “Like I said. Sloppy.”

Ben could’ve kissed her then and there, but he was going to have to wait a minute. “We need to restrain him,” he told her, then he looked down over the unconscious forms of his two coworkers. “All of them.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Rey replied. 

“Sorry you had to see this.” 

“See what?” 

Without warning, Ben took his hand and forced Snoke’s skull into the wall, rendering him unconscious as well. He collapsed to the floor with a dull thud as they both watched, but he seemed to still be alive if the slow and steady rise and fall of his chest was any indication. 

Rey didn’t even flinch beside him, making the now former agent wonder just what she’d seen and been through in her life that she was unphased by all that had just happened. In fact, she was responsible for the defeat of his boss. It was occurring to him as he opened up his drawers, and pulled out various suit ties — it wasn’t like he was carrying around handcuffs and he needed something to hold their attackers in place until the police figured out which apartment had been shot at — that his soulmate was an absolute bad ass. 

“Where’d you learn to do all that?” he asked curiously, handing her a tie and instructing her to bind their wrists behind their backs. 

She shrugged as she rolled Mitaka over, and grasped his wrists in her hands. “You remember my tragic backstory, right?”

He gave her a nod as he bound Snoke, taking another tie, and using it to try and staunch the flow of blood from his wound. Ben had killed and wounded before, but he’d never been a particularly strong fan of needing to take a life, and he needed his boss alive if he was going to be able to testify what he did in court. “Yeah? I’m guessing you’re as tough as you look, then?”

“I guess so,” she replied with a chuckle as Ben moved to tying down Hux. “At least it’s over now, hmm?”

Ben blinked, realizing she was right. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“What do you think you’ll do now?”

He paused, then he stood up, wiping a few droplets of Snoke’s blood on the black fabric of his slacks as she rose to match him. For a few seconds, they stood there like that just staring at each other, both uncertain of the next move they’d make. Outside his window, the police sirens were growing louder still, and flashing blue lights had started to fill the room at some point to signify the arrival of the police. 

While he was aware her question inferred what sort of work he’d do now that he was out of a job, Ben took it to mean what he’d do in the next few minutes, and his eyes dropped down, catching a glimpse of her soft looking pink lips. In that moment, he knew exactly what he wanted to do since the worst was over, and a blush crept up his cheeks as he scratched the back of his neck. “Now… I’d um…” Good  _ Christ  _ did he have to be so awkward about it? It was just a kiss, it wasn’t like he’d never kissed a woman before. Why was his brain making this so difficult? “I kind of want to kiss you, if you don’t mind.”

_ Finally _ , he’d said it. The request was out in the air, and all that needed to happen was for her to say —

“I’ve been fucking waiting for you to ask,” she replied, then Rey stepped forward, gripping him by the lapels of his suit jacket before she pulled him down to her, bringing his lips to hers. 

Ben froze initially against the kiss, but then as Rey slipped a hand up to thread her fingers through his hair, he finally found the strength to move. His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her tightly against him as he kissed his soulmate for the first time. 

Throughout his life, he’d heard stories about what it was like to be with one’s soulmate, the person they were fated to be with from birth. He’d already experienced what it felt like to have his mark touched and to touch hers in turn, but something about a full on kiss was almost infinitely more intimate. Rey’s lips were soft against his, moving in time with him in a perfect harmony that felt sweeter than any music he’d ever heard. There was a familiarity to kissing her, like he’d recognized the feeling of her kiss despite having never even met her before that day. 

That and belonging like he’d never known before rushed through his veins, pumped through his system by his pounding heart. He knew she could feel it, too as she let her other palm slide down, and rest over his chest, directly over the soulmark she’d touched for the first time just a few hours earlier. Ben smiled into the kiss, then he pulled away a few seconds later, defeated by his body’s cursed need for oxygen. 

Both of them were panting as they parted, their breath coming out in short little puffs of air that had him wondering whether they were actually taking in any into their starved lungs. Soft little giggles left them both as they stared at each other, then went in for another, brief kiss before he unwrapped an arm from her waist, and rested his own fingers over the center of her chest, feeling as if he were on fire from the contact. 

“ _ Shit,” _ Rey breathed, still panting hard, her heart still hammering beneath his fingers as they came down from the high of their initial kiss. “You’re… are you naturally that good at it or is… is that just because we share a mark?”

Ben laughed openly, and she giggled in turn, her smile lighting up the dark room better than the flashing lights of the police outside his building. “I don’t know,” he replied, then he gave her a playful little smirk he’d picked up from his father. “But we can always find out?”

A wicked grin grew on Rey’s face, then she pulled him back in for another kiss, which he quickly returned, relishing in the simple joy that came with kissing her until the cops finally found his door a few minutes later. 

The day was supposed to end in tragedy. He was supposed to be without a mark and recovering to become another soulless agent of the United States, but instead he’d found her, and no man in the history of the entire world had ever been so lucky. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This epilogue is super short but heck I was just excited to wrap this. Thanks so much to everyone who read it... And Hopefully this is a decent enough ending.

It took six months to take Snoke down. After that night, Ben finally felt like he’d gotten his life back, and thanks to Finn and Poe’s endless work and sleepless nights, he was freed from that department and allowed to find work instead as an analyst under a different apartment. He now answered to a woman by the name of Amilyn Holdo, who happened to be friends with his mother, allowing him to actually visit his family for the first time in years. 

His parents had welcomed him with open arms just a week after he and Rey had successfully defeated his former boss. Despite being thirty two years old, he wound up staying with them for a week, spending most of his time catching up on all that he’d missed with them over the last several years since he’d been taken under Snoke’s wing. During that time, his soulmate had given him distance to restart his life, needing to keep her tattoo parlor in order as well as not wanting to rush into things too quickly. 

Still, they’d only kissed once, and he had every intention of kissing her again. Eventually, they’d pick up where they’d left off, wouldn’t they?

Even after his return back to Jakku things were still slow. She’d welcomed him back with open arms, but with their court case against Snoke still pending, they’d both agreed to put their actual relationship on pause, staying friends until everything had been closed up and sealed in a folder. He made sure to visit her frequently, finding that sometimes just being in her presence made his days better. 

Rey was tough, but around him she was a bit softer, especially on the rare nights when they’d wind up on his sofa, holding each other and talking late into the night. Those nights revealed to him what they could be; what he one day hoped they  _ would _ be, and as the months progressed, he couldn’t wait to see it. 

When the court case finally drew to a close, he’d been expecting things to go slow again, but the moment they were alone again, she was kissing him enthusiastically. Ben had nearly yelped in shock as he found himself pinned against a wall, with Rey’s smiling lips claiming his in a kiss of victory. The moment she pulled away, he knew they were going to be in this for the long haul from the look in her eyes. 

After that, their relationship took off. They began dating, but since they’d practically been in an unspoken partnership for six months already, their dates tended to take on the tone of an old married couple. He and Rey stayed in far more often than they went out, winding up making love for the first time a month into their official courtship thanks to a rainy day that had declared the both of them too lazy to leave his apartment. 

That night he’d never laughed harder, or felt more love toward another human being than he did when he was with her. Was this what every pair of soulmates experienced? Where every moment, including the difficult ones, left him feeling emotionally fulfilled and even happy? If this was what he would’ve missed out on had he followed Snoke’s orders, he’d never been more grateful toward another person for stopping him from making a mistake. 

It was another few months after that when Rey possessed a drawer in his bedroom, then his closet space, and soon enough she had agreed to move in with him, and he knew the day she unpacked her last box that his life was finally taking off. 

She commuted to the tattoo parlor, and Ben tended to hitch rides in her camaro since some days they wound up leaving around the same time, and those days tended to be his favorite days. Of course, he considered just about every day with her as his favorite days, but those in particular tended to stand out. 

It was on one of those days that he finally agreed to let her put ink on his skin after she’d been asking him for several days if he’d ever consider it. Ben caved after only four, and spent the next three deciding on what to get. 

On the morning he finally decided to do it, he knew precisely what he wanted her to imprint upon his skin. He knew it as they laid in bed together, and the sun was rising as she slept on in his arms. The night before she’d elected to wear one of his old v-neck t-shirts, allowing him a view of the mark they shared where it sat on the center of her chest, binding them together from the moment the two were born. 

For a moment he sat there staring at it, almost mesmerized by the little five stars forming the sword, wanting to reach out with his hand and touch it, but not wishing to wake her up. Rey looked peaceful in her sleep, unbothered by the world; though since they’d started their relationship, neither of them had experienced much pain. 

Instead he elected to hold her for a while, letting the rising sun brighten the sky as they sat there in their bed. It was Ben’s first day off in a while, and they were about to take full advantage of it, including lounging around in bed for far longer than they needed to. Well, they would until Rey had to go off and work on a client, but they had plans of their own for what they'd do in that tattoo parlor first. 

“Morning,” Rey said after a while, causing him to jolt a little from fright. Both of them burst into a fit of laughter as he recovered from the shock. “Sorry.”

“No… no, it’s fine…” he replied, reaching up to caress her jaw with one hand. “It’s just one of the perils of living with you.”

“Hmm… I seem to remember you enjoying those perils last night,” she told him, letting her fingers wander down his chest until they reached the spot just over his mark, and shivers rushed down his spine at the contact. 

Despite his reaction, Ben smirked at her as he turned onto his side. “Did I? I can’t remember.”

Rey laughed as she shoved his shoulder. “Ben!” she cried with delight as he began to press kisses to her cheeks.

“Maybe you should remind me.”

“Ben, we’re supposed to head to the parlor in half an hour!”

“... Remind me quickly, then,” he said, then with another fit of giggles, he was kissing her again, and the two melted into the mattress as the early morning passed them by. 

Somehow they managed to get on the road half an hour later. Well… half an hour and five minutes, thanks to Ben’s inability to choose between jackets on their way out —  _ and definitely no other reason — _ before they finally left. 

As they drove down the road, an old, soft rock song played over the radio, and Ben leaned his head back against the seat as he looked over at his soulmate, marveling again at how lucky he’d become. Rey’s face was the picture of concentration as she turned onto the street that led to the parlor, and he found a smile breaking out on his as he watched her straighten out the car, the daisy tattoo on her arm catching his eye as she set her arm down and reached for the gear shift. “I love that one,” he told her. “On your shoulder? It suits you perfectly.”

Rey’s cheeks flushed, then she grinned as she pulled into the parking lot behind the parlor, the very same one she’d driven him home from after they’d first met. The memory of their first meeting filled his brain every time he came to visit her at work, making him grateful to her all over again for how she’d saved his life from becoming effectively a barren wasteland of misery. He really was the luckiest man on Earth, and she reminded him of it daily. 

“Let’s find  _ you _ something that fits you perfectly, then,” she told him, leaning over the space between their seats to press a brief, but passionate kiss to his lips. They’d been together for more than half a year now, but still every time she kissed him he felt a little dizzy, like his entire body was electric. 

As he pulled away, there was a stupidly wide smile on his face as he watched her get out of the car first, then he followed suit, listening to the sound of their doors shutting before he walked over to the other side of the car, and took her hand. 

The two of them entered the parlor through the back room where he was supposed to get his tattoo removed. Once they were inside, Rey squeezed his hand, then let go, and gestured for him to take a seat in the dentist’s chair looking thing she’d first seen his mark in more than a year earlier. The memories of how they first met sometimes made him shiver, but every time he thought about what almost happened, he reminded himself that it didn’t, and he’d found a way out of that life instead. 

_ Fuck, _ he truly owed his soulmate a life debt. 

Ben sat down in the seat, removing his jacket without another word, and letting the black leather hang over the back of the chair as Rey prepared her tools. “So, what are you thinking of? Now that you’re free to mark your skin…” She set down the needle, walking forward until she was able to rest her hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Anything in particular in mind?

Winking, he gestured for her to lean down, and she blinked at him a few times, but gave in, allowing him the opportunity to whisper what he wanted from his artist in her ear. When Rey pulled away after hearing it, she was smiling as she gave him a nod. “I love it,” she told him, then she immediately set to work prepping him. 

The whole thing didn’t take long, no more than an hour since he’d decided to get it colored like the ones she had. Ben barely resisted flinching as she marked him, but every time he looked into her eyes, even if she wasn’t looking back, he felt a wave of calm wash over him, and in the trust that had built between them, he felt at ease, and allowed himself to just watch her as she worked. 

Rey was never more focused than she was when she was working on a client, and on this particular client, her brows were furrowed and her gaze intense. The design was simple and she knew it well, but he knew she was worried about drawing even the most mundane of things on him. If only she knew how little he cared that it was perfect. He just wanted it to be done by her — to have one last fuck you to his old boss for his efforts to try and take his mark away from him. What better way to do that than to have her mark him again?

By the time she finished, he didn’t even notice the slightly uncomfortable pain he felt on his shoulder, and Rey was smiling again as she began to put everything away, looking down at her work in admiration. “This is perfect,” she told him, 

Ben stared down at his new tattoo, taking note of the perfect shape of the daisy that matched the one she bore on both her shoulder and wrist, ensuring that they now matched not only in their souls, but by choice as well. “I love it,” he replied as he stood up off the chair, and stepped forward to take her face in his hands. “You did great.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, then he leaned forward, and kissed her again. Rey didn’t hesitate to return it, wrapping her arms around his waist as she pulled him close to her, fisting her hands in the fabric of the black t-shirt he was wearing. 

Heart soaring in his chest, Ben came to another realization as he kissed her in the room they’d first met — well, where they’d first  _ talked — _  that he was never ever going to even consider being with someone else, and his new tattoo only cemented the fact that he was hers and she was his. Their relationship had been marked for forever in every way but one, and he knew precisely what he had to do next. 

For the next several minutes they stayed in that back room kissing like teenagers, except with a certain sort of joy that he knew could only come with kissing his soulmate, but already a plan had formed in his mind. 

That day, Rey had one client to see before she’d be free to join him back at their apartment to spend their evening together, and that left Ben with two hours of free time before he had to be back there to meet her. This would allow him just enough time to slip over to the jewelry store around the corner and pick up a ring that would be suitable for his soulmate. 

As he pulled away, he leaned up to press a kiss to her forehead, then he gave her a gentle smile. “I’m going to go pick up some lunch while you’re busy,” he told her, then he stroked the skin of her cheek with his thumb. “Need anything?”

“Just you,” she replied, giving him another short kiss before she pulled away. “And maybe a slice of pizza, but mostly you.”

Ben laughed as he released her face, then he grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair, wincing briefly at the pain in his shoulder before he slid his arms through its sleeves, and took her hand in his one last time. “Just me and pizza?” 

“Just you and pizza.”

Another light chuckle, then he leaned forward, and pressed another kiss to her cheek. “I love you,” he whispered. 

“I love you, too, you moron, now get out. My client will be here any minute,” she warned him, shoving him lightly away before she turned to face her table, and prepped her tools anew. 

For a few seconds, he stood there watching her, then with a subtle grin on his face, he made his way toward the back door, and headed out into the city, keeping a swift and steady pace as he walked out of the parking lot behind the parlor. Hope was in his eyes as he turned onto the main street, already spotting the lights of the jewelry store around the corner, but he wasn’t nervous as he made his way toward it. 

With a relationship like theirs, all he had to do was ask — he already knew that the moment he got down on one knee, there would only be one answer…   _ yes _ . 


End file.
